Pete McMartin: Dear Son -- Why I went to war

Words to live by: Tom Walmsley’s letter to his young son laid out the way he lived his own life

Brian Josling holds the letter his father wrote him when he turned two years of age on Dec. 14, 1944.

Photograph by: wayne leidenfrost
, Vancouver Sun

On the night of Dec. 23, 1944, Catherine Walmsley of Toronto received a telegram from the commanding officer of the RCAF training base at Boundary Bay.

It read:

“Deeply regret to inform you that an aircraft in which your husband J39963 Flying Officer Thomas Leslie Walmsley was slying (sic) crashed on this airdrome (sic) twenty third December 1944. Stop. Two of the four occupants are seriously injured but identified. Stop. One body recovered but cannot be identified as yet. Stop. One occupant still missing presumed killed. Stop. Impossible at present time to inform you which one of latter two is your husband further details will be supplied when information is available.”

Two days later, on Christmas Day, another telegram arrived confirming that the one body they had been unable to identify had been her husband’s. His casket, she was informed, had been permanently sealed — it remained closed during the funeral ceremony.

Tom Walmsley had joined the RCAF in 1943. He had a gift for mathematics, and in basic training he so impressed his navigation instructors that for the first 10 months of his air force career he stayed on in Toronto to become an instructor himself.

The war called, though, and in late November 1944, he was transferred to Boundary Bay to train on a twin-engined Mitchell bomber. After his training, he was to be posted to India.

Several weeks of fog had kept the crews grounded after Walmsley first arrived in Boundary Bay, but on Dec. 23 the weather cleared. Walmsley and his crewmates started their first training run. A subsequent letter from the base’s commanding officer described what happened.

“The weather was excellent and flying conditions nearly perfect. The aircraft began its take off run and became airborne for a few seconds. It then touched down again on the runway, swung lightly to the left, went off the runway and crashed into a wide deep drainage ditch approximately 250 yards beyond the end of the runway. The aircraft hit with terrific force and broke up, and then burst into flames. The impact was such that your husband must have been killed almost instantly.”

Tom Walmsley was 30.

His son, Brian, was two. He was too young at the time to remember anything of his father, and he has no memories of the days following news of his death.

When he was nine, his mother talked to him about his father. She told him that she had loved him, and that on Dec. 14, 1944, which was Brian’s birthday and nine days before his father’s death, his father had written a letter to him. His mother gave him the letter.

It was handwritten on thin airmail stationary. It was five pages long. As hundreds of thousands of other letters in those war years must have sounded, it had the tone of a man hedging his bets, of knowing all too well what could befall him, and who wanted to leave something of himself behind for a son if the worst came. It began:

“Dear Brian

“So you are two years old today. Many happy returns of the day. Although you will not understand this letter, I just felt I should put in writing my feelings regarding you.

“It is just two years ago since you came into your mother’s & my life. In those two years, we have come to know you very well and love you very much. You have made our life very happy & since that December morning the two of us have had only one thing in mind. That was to see that you had a happy life. I think we have succeeded so far but in so doing you have also made our life very happy in just seeing you grow up & enjoy life so far.”

It was then his father explains to his son why he was going to war.

“I have belonged to the Air Force since you have been with us & up to last month had the good fortune to be right around home so that I could see you & your mother quite often. Now, it has been decided that I should go away for about two years. You are a little young to understand what this war is about. I shall give you my feelings in a few words. Some men in another part of the world decided that they should rule the world, so with this object in mind went to war. Their aims were to change all people to their way of thinking. If they had succeeded, it would mean as you grew up you could not have freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religion & a lot of other things. I have grown up taking these things for granted but now that they are threatened, (I) intend to fight with many millions of others to see that these freedoms shall not be taken away from little fellows like you. We hope that this time it shall not be necessary for you to go to war when you grow up.”

The letter continues on like this for a bit, then changes. It becomes tender, the words of a man who aches only to be with his family.

“Someday, son, when all this is over, if God wills it, the three of us will again take up our life where we left it off.

“You know, Brian, I get quite homesick at times now thinking of you, how you used to climb up on my knee, your enjoyment out of me taking you for a walk & then buying you a cone, going downtown for a streetcar & bus ride & a million other little things that all add up to make a little boy like you so precious to his mother & Dad.”

The letter ends:

“Well, Brian, I will have to close now. Remember, for the next couple of years you will be the man around the house & to look after that swell girl you call Mother. Then some day I hope to come home & relieve you of the job.

“Keep on enjoying life in your own way and may you have many happy & prosperous birthdays, and luck in all you undertake in your life. Goodbye for now son.

“Your loving Dad.”

Tom Walmsley’s body was returned to Toronto, and was buried there. In the years that followed, Catherine would remarry to Cecil Josling, who was also in the RCAF and who grew up in the same Toronto neighbourhood. He was a good man, and a good stepfather to Brian, and Brian loved him.

But his father’s letter stayed with him through his life, and as a way of honouring it, he took its message to heart. He raised a family. He became a successful businessman. He spent time mentoring the young people he would hire.

“I believe in simplicity,” he said, “and I certainly believe in responsibility, and I certainly believe in gratitude, and Tom’s letter talks about all those things.”

He has reread the letter many times. When he moved here from Toronto in 1982, he placed a replica of his father’s grave marker in the Air Force Garden of Remembrance in Stanley Park. He visits it often, and speaks to Tom there, he said, just as he visits his father’s grave in Toronto, where he speaks to him there, too. When he is in Ottawa, he always visits the Peace Tower, where his father’s name is listed in the Tower’s Books of Remembrance that lists the names of all the Canadian servicemen and women who died in wartime. It is on Page 471. He always asks the commissionaires to turn the book to that page.

He was asked if his father’s death had left a hole in his life.

“No, no,” he said, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

“I feel I knew him. I certainly feel he knew me. His love for me is described in the letter, so I certainly would have returned that.”

He had married well, he said, and remarried well after his first wife died. He had three lovely children. He enjoyed the success and freedom his father had wished for him.

It was why, he said, he had come to us with his father’s letter.

“One, I believe Tom knows about this, and I believe he’s going to be happy about it.

“The second issue is, I’ve done a ton of mentoring in my life ... and I think there’s a message in here for young people, and I think that’s what Remembrance Day should be about. And the message is simply, you know the reason we went to war is so our sons and daughters wouldn’t have to, and, as Tom says, it’s really not right if somebody wants to restrict our freedoms. And I think kids need to know that.

“But thirdly, Tom talks about responsibility. He’s talking to a two-year-old and he writes that if I don’t get home, you take care of that swell girl called Mom. Well, I think our kids need to hear that. Life is a game of payback, and kids today are not aware of the fact that you really have to pay back.”

His father’s letter has not only been a link to him, he said, but a manual on how to live the life his father had hoped he would live. He could feel his father’s DNA in it, he said, and felt the same DNA running through himself.

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